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Spanish Communist leader Yolanda Diaz presently serves as minister of labor and social economy in the coalition government of Spain headed by Pablo Sanchez’s Socialist Party (PSOE). It includes the United Podemos (UP) formation, with which Díaz’s own Communist Party of Spain (PCE) is associated. (Podemos is “Yes, we can!)

Recently, the Chief Minister of Punjab, Charanjit Singh Channi announced that his government will soon bring a law to ensure that jobs in Punjab are reserved for Punjabis. Punjab will become the fifth state to join the “75 per cent reservation for locals” bloc. Earlier, Andhra Pradesh and, Haryana had also enacted laws for domicile-based reservations in the private sector. Jharkhand has introduced a similar Bill, while Karnataka has been promising to introduce a 100 per cent reservation for Kannadigas in blue collar jobs since 2016.

Jack Dorsey, 45, on Monday announced his resignation as the CEO of social media giant Twitter he co-founded in 2005. His resignation came almost abruptly although a media report had hinted at the possibility recently. Dorsey has been acting as the CEO of both Twitter and the electronic payments company Square.

If there is an Indian who can give coronavirus a run for its money, it is farmers’ leader Rakesh Tikait. Now, in its Omicron avatar, coronavirus, with 53 spike proteins—meaning 53 mutations—is ‘stubborner’ than a mule, and Tikait a week and a half ago, unseated Prime Minister Narendra Modi from that exalted seat. The Tikait trait Omicron and its predecessors share is ‘stubbornness’. Till the morning Prime Minister Narendra Modi accepted his “mistake” and declared he would repeal the three “black” laws, there was no doubt in anybody’s mind that Modi was by far the most obstinate man in the ‘I Will Not Bend’ racket.

The state run Central Electronics Limited (CEL) has become the second victim of Modi government’s selling spree of public sector companies this year. It was sold damn cheap at only Rs 210 crore to Nandal Finance, a company which has no expertise to run the business successfully, apart from its low capital base, jeopardizing the very objective for which it was established in 1974 as a public sector company.

From today November 30, the World Trade Organisation (WTO) was scheduled to hold its 12th ministerial meeting for four days in Geneva to discuss a number of crucial issues for the developing countries including some waiver in respect of Trade Relates Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS). This relates to patents and in the context of the current pandemic, the dilution of the current patent laws is of prime importance to the poorer and the developing countries.

Waves of new variants of the old accursed pandemic is bad news for the health of the planet. On top, the economic disruptions that these have been creating is a double whammy. The only silver lining is that people learn fast to tackle new situations, however difficult these are.

As Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray recuperated in hospital, recovering from a spine surgery, his three-legged Maha Vikas Aghadi government crept into its third year in power. It can be said, though, that the MVA dispensation could have done worse—it managed to stay afloat in the sea of corruption and skullduggery that continues to threaten Uddhav Thackeray’s reign, the first Thackeray to deign to rule Maharashtra instead of lording it over the “political party of Maharashtra.”

Leftist opposition candidate Xiomara Castro raced to an early big lead in the Honduran presidential election on Sunday November 28 positioning her to become the first female head of the Central American country. The wife of the former President Manuel Zelaya secured 53 per cent support as against 33 per cent by the ruling National Party’s candidate Nasry Astura, as per the latest counting figures. The poll watchers projected her big win at the end of the final counting.

The four labour codes subsuming 29 labour laws that Modi government is vigorously pursuing to implement in the next fiscal 2022-23 are decidedly substandard, since it does not include a large number of standards that are already agreed by the international community. The codes primarily aim at enhancing “ease of doing business” and thereby intentionally and unintentionally make room for “ease of exploitation of workers” obstructing not only “decent work for all” but also decent growth with better working environment for business and industries in the country.